While plastic shopping bags are inexpensive and convenient in use, they are by many accounts considered an environmental nightmare of a very grand scale. To be sure, by some estimates, over a billion plastic shopping bags are used each year in the United States alone. With a recycling rate estimated at less than 1%, disposal of plastic shopping bags creates some 300,000 tons of landfill waste annually. Because such shopping bags are not biodegradable, but are subject to degradation under light, they tend to break down over time into smaller and smaller particles that are expensive and difficult, if even possible, to remove, thus causing persistent soil and groundwater contamination.
Unfortunately, the cost of recycling one ton of plastic shopping bags can reach some $4,000, while the recycled product has a market value of as little as thirty dollars. Given the unlikelihood that consumers and retailers will forego the low cost convenience afforded by plastic shopping bags compounded by financial impracticability of recycling, any other solution is desperately needed. With that in mind, it is an overriding object of the present invention to promote environmentally conscious refuse disposal. To that end, Applicant has invented a novel and inventive wastebasket that is specifically adapted to encourage greater reuse of plastic shopping bags by facilitating the reuse of such plastic shopping bags without requiring sacrifice of aesthetically pleasing design features or ease of use.
In particular, it is an object of the present invention to provide a wastebasket specifically adapted to provide convenient storage of and access to plastic shopping bags, thereby making the plastic shopping bags readily available at the time and place where they are most likely to be reused. Additionally, it is an object of the present invention to provide such a wastebasket that is also specifically adapted to present an aesthetically pleasing appearance, thereby ensuring that users will be most likely to want to use the wastebasket.
In more detail, it is an object of the present invention to provide such a wastebasket that provides for complete concealment of stored plastic shopping bags; that provides for the substantial concealment of a plastic shopping bag in use; and that requires no sacrifice of traditional concepts of design and/or décor.
Finally, it is an object of the present invention to provide such a wastebasket that is readily and economically manufactured in a manner intended to be long lasting, thereby ensuring that the wastebasket is widely available to consumers of all means and that the wastebasket itself will not likely become landfill.